Wintry blastboosts skiing

Monday

When most people looked out the window Friday morning and saw the snow piling up outside, they probably thought something like this: "Ugh. Snow."

But when skiers looked outside and saw the same, their thoughts were probably a little different, as in: "Would anyone believe me if I called in sick?"

Last week's early shot of winter weather got the wheels turning for an industry that hasn't had many happy Decembers recently. And it made skiers who were already anxious to get to the slopes for the first time this season a little twitchy.

"I was already thinking about skiing; that usually starts for me in the fall," said Center Township resident George Merges. "The snow just made it a little harder to wait."

Merges isn't the only one who's excited. Doug Stone, district manager for the Ski North ski shops in North Fayette Township and the South Hills, says snow in early December usually means a good holiday shopping season is on tap.

"We see the hard-core skiers regardless of what's going on with the weather here, but a little snow gets other people thinking about skiing," Stone said. "They might only be buying coats or gloves for themselves, but it definitely makes a difference in the number of people who are coming in to the stores."

That's kind of the psychology of snow, according to people who work in the business. It's the same for the folks who work at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Somerset County, where a snowy December can mean it's going to be a good season.

"You want to have a good start, and part of that is getting good and cold early," said Bob Duppstadt, marketing director at Seven Springs. "Part of that is getting a little snow in Pittsburgh, because it gets people thinking about coming out our way."

Seven Springs also got an early start in 2006 - kind of. It was able to open Dec. 8, but a prolonged stretch of warm, dry weather cut back on the number of runs it was able to keep open, and didn't give the resort much of a Christmas week.

"Any ski resort will tell you they want to have a good Christmas week," Duppstadt said. "We're the same way. If we have a lot of terrain open, we could see up to 15 percent of our annual skier visits for the season in that week alone."

The folks who work in the Allegheny County Parks Department are eager to show off the ski area at Boyce Park in Plum, in part because they've had a longer break than any of their competitors. The tiny ski area stayed closed last season while the county completed a $1 million renovation that left it with a refurbished chairlift, improvements at the lodge and a brand-new snow tubing area.

"This early snow gets you thinking about it, yes," said Clarence Hopson, the department's deputy director. "We're pretty proud of what we've done at Boyce, and we think people are going to like the changes."

Unlike its much larger neighbor to the east, Boyce is a bit, um, vertically challenged, which Hopson said means the county has to wait a little bit longer than the resorts to get the season started.

"Another thing we've added is seven new snowmaking guns, so we can get the area covered and ready a lot faster than we could in the past," Hopson said. "We need some cold weather to settle in, and we'll be ready to go."

Despite the differences in size, Hopson said the psychology of snow works the same for Boyce as it does for Seven Springs.

"We started getting calls from people wanting to know when we'll be open," he said. "They're thinking about it because there's that snow on the ground."

For Merges, the wait won't last too long. He said there's an excellent chance he'll sneak out to Seven Springs before Christmas just to take advantage of the season's early start.

"Yeah, I don't see waiting around for too much longer," he said. "I mean, I've only been thinking about it since October. It's time to finally get started."

Wrong. The snowmaking guns at Seven Springs and other ski areas will spit out something frozen at that temperature, but it won't be very good to ski on. What you need, said Bob Duppstadt, the resort's marketing director, is a mix of the right temperatures, humidity and wind to really make those guns productive.

"Mostly, it needs to be cold, and that means no warmer than 28 degrees," Duppstadt said. "And if it's colder, and you have the right humidity levels and winds, you'll be in good shape."

If conditions are right - as they were for much of last week - Seven Springs can produce a massive amount of snow. Duppstadt said the system there can pump out enough to cover 54 acres with a foot of snow in about five hours.

"We don't always get the kind of natural snow we'd all like to see," he said. "But if it's cold enough, we can make up for it."

"I wish I didn't have to stay home and install chair rails on my day off."

Doug Stone, district manager for Ski North stores, when asked what he thought of when he saw the snow falling last week.

THE BEST DAY EVER

For Center Township resident George Merges, the best day he's ever had skiing didn't come during a trip to a resort out West. It was here at home, right after a trip to the Rockies.

"I had always been one of the stragglers, that guy everyone had to wait on when they were skiing in a group," Merges said. "Everyone was always good about it, but I knew I was slowing everyone down."

That changed after a long trip out West, where a couple of skiing partners didn't spend as much time waiting for Merges on the much-longer runs there. Merges said that by the end of that trip, he had learned how to keep up.

"The first time I skied with the group at Seven Springs after the trip, I volunteered to be the first to head down Gunnar (a long expert run)." he said. "I got to the bottom, and I waited. And waited. And waited. I had that breakthrough out West and when I got back here, I wasn't among the stragglers any more."

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